GBC student creates a short film Ticketed For What? about the Safe Streets Act
It all started when Yvonne Sung was talking with her long-time friend Richel Castaneda and learned that she was working as a law student with homeless people who were ticketed under the Safe Streets Act.
Sung, a digital media marketing student at George Brown College, said that Castaneda told her that homeless people could accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in fines from Safe Streets Act tickets.
“When she told me that I said ‘that’s ridiculous, normal people we get ticketed for speeding, but they get ticketed because they are on the street,” said Sung.
According to the Homeless Hub, The Ontario Safe Streets Act was enacted by the provincial government in 1999.
The Safe Streets Act addresses panhandling, squeegeeing and other forms of solicitation as “aggressive manner… that is likely to cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety and security.”
Sung said she knew she had to do something. She contacted Fair Change Community Legal Services, where Castaneda worked, and participated in drop-in info sessions at local shelters every Friday.
Fair Change Community Legal Services launched a lawsuit in 2017 that challenges the law in Ontario Superior Court. That challenge is still working it’s way through the system.
Sung soon launched a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter, quickly meeting her target of $7,000, and started co-ordinating filming with homeless people she meet through the agency and gathered a small team to begin production.
All the funds would be used to cover their crew fees, production and post-production, the perks production and shipping, and film festival submissions.
The team consists of Sung as director and co-producer; Sarra Francis as co-producer, Kathryn Lyons as an editor and Monica Que as a designer. Her teammates are her friends from Ryerson and OCAD, which were her previous schools.
“I did not know about this situation and I believe that not a lot of people know,” said Sung. “I just thought people should know and the government should do about it. At least, some politicians could help to change the issue.”
Ticketed for What? tells details the raw reality of homeless communities in Toronto. The short film is narrated by a person who was formerly homeless and was ticketed under the Safe Streets Act.
“The minute you wake up is probably to an officer or security guard or somebody,” said a man identified only as a former client of Fair Change in a clip from the film posted to YouTube. “An hour in, if you’re going start making money, then you’re going to see a cop within 10-20 minutes.”
The man told the filmmakers how he would just toss the tickets because when you’re homeless his life didn’t depend on having a good credit score, but it was a concern when he got an apartment and went back to school.
“These tickets are never going to get paid, nobody is ever going to have the means to pay them,” he said. “It’s obviously not working, it’s been in since the late 90s, it hasn’t eliminated people begging in the streets. The only thing that’s going to prevent homelessness is homes, not police.”
Sung hopes the short documentary will be shown at film festivals in Toronto and Canada. It will also be available to watch on online streaming channels such as Vimeo, so everybody can watch it.
Sung said she hopes the short documentary will create more awareness that homeless people are being targeted under the law.
